We cause some of our own problems.

Re:
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Egypt orders slaughter of all pigs over swine flu
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090429/ap_on_he_me/ml_egypt_swine_flu
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It took me decades after the 60's to realize "hippie" critics were right. We really do live in a death culture - where every problem has one "solution": kill. Consider why we're here at this moment in history, going to war at the drop of the hat, exterminating species right and left for "good" reasons and still not able to understand why the problems just keep on getting bigger. The way to prevent disease is to promote health, rather than fighting disease. This targeting of designated enemies is a bottomless pit, just as there is no smallest unit of matter at the bottom of the microscope, or outer limit to the Universe where some type of wall exists. To check disease, encourage microbiodiversity rather than target individual species.

Fear-centered reactionaries like George W. Bush - whose wife jokingly referred to him as "Chainsaw George" because his answer to any problem at the ranch was to cut it down - are making destructive decisions that will not solve the problems. At the very least, the slaughtered animals should be composted to encourage the microbial web of life upon which the rest of us species depend.
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alternet.org/healthwellness/138798/the_swine_flu_crisis_lays_bare_the_meat_industry's_monstrous_power
...corporate livestock producers treat health regulations with the same contempt with which they deal with workers and animals....
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From:
Flying Pigs, Tamiflu and Factory Farms
by F. William Engdahl 4/29/9
globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13408
...‘Residents believed the outbreak had been caused by contamination from pig breeding farms located in the area. They believed that the farms, operated by Granjas Carroll, polluted the atmosphere and local water bodies, which in turn led to the disease outbreak. According to residents, the company denied responsibility for the outbreak and attributed the cases to "flu." However, a municipal health official stated that preliminary investigations indicated that the disease vector was a type of fly that reproduces in pig waste and that the outbreak was linked to the pig farms.'4

Since the dawn of American ‘agribusiness,' a project initiated with funding by the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1950's to turn farming into a pure profit maximization business, US pig or hog production has been transformed into a highly efficient, mass production industrialized enterprise from birth to slaughter. Pigs are caged in what are called Factory Farms, industrial concentrations which are run with the efficiency of a Dachau or Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. They are all conceived by artificial insemination and once born, are regularly injected with antibiotics, not because of illnesses which abound in the hyper-crowded growing pens, but in order to make them grow and add weight faster. Turn around time to slaughter is a profit factor of highest priority. The entire operation is vertically integrated from conception to slaughter to transport distribution to supermarket.

Granjas Carroll de Mexico (GCM) happens to be such a Factory Farm concentration facility for hogs. In 2008 they produced almost one million factory hogs, 950,000 according to their own statistics. GCM is a joint venture operation owned 50% by the world's largest pig producing industrial company, Smithfield Foods of Virginia.5 The pigs are grown in a tiny rural area of Mexico , a member of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and primarily trucked across the border to supermarkets in the USA , under the Smithfields' family of labels...

Manure Lagoons and other playing fields

The Times of London interviewed the mother of 4-year-old Edgar Hernandez... Edgar was the first known sufferer of swine flu, a revelation that has put La Gloria and its surrounding factory pig farms and ‘manure lagoons' at the centre of a global race to find how this new and deadly strain of swine flu emerged.' 6

That's quite interesting. They speak of ‘La Gloria and its surrounding factory pig farms and ‘manure lagoons.'' Presumably the manure lagoons around the LaGloria factory pig farm of Smithfield Foods are the waste dumping place for the feces and urine waste from at least 950,000 pigs a year that pass through the facility. The Smithfield 's Mexico joint venture, Norson, states that alone they slaughter 2,300 pigs daily. That's a lot. It gives an idea of the volumes of pig waste involved in the concentration facility at La Gloria.

Significantly, according to the Times reporters, ‘residents of La Gloria have been complaining since March that the odour from Granjas Carroll's pig waste was causing severe respiratory infections. They held a demonstration this month at which they carried signs of pigs crossed with an X and marked with the word peligro (danger).'7 There have been calls to exhume the bodies of the children who died of pneumonia so that they could be tested. The state legislature of Veracruz has demanded that Smithfield 's Granjas Carroll release documents about its waste-handling practices. Smithfield Foods reportedly declined to comment on the request, saying that it would ‘not respond to rumours.'8

A research compilation by Ed Harris reported, ‘According to residents, the company denied responsibility for the outbreak and attributed the cases to ‘flu.' However, a municipal health official stated that preliminary investigations indicated that the disease vector was a type of fly that reproduces in pig waste and that the outbreak was linked to the pig farms.'9 That would imply that the entire Swine Flu scare might have originated from the PR spin doctors of the world's largest industrial pig factory farm operation, Smithfield Foods.

The Vera Cruz-based newspaper La Marcha blames Smithfield 's Granjos Carroll for the outbreak, highlighting inadequate treatment of massive quantities of animal waste from hog production.10

Understandably the company is perhaps more than a bit uncomfortable with the sudden attention. The company, which supplies the McDonald's and Subway fast-food chains, was fined $12.3 million in the United States 1997 for violating the Clean Water Act. Perhaps they are in a remote tiny Mexican rural area enjoying a relatively lax regulatory climate where they need not worry about being cited for violations of any Clean Water Act....
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